雪村友梅 Sesson Yūbai (1290-1347)

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesson_Y%C5%ABbai

Sesson's portrait at 松音寺 Shōon-ji templom

Sesson Yūbai's Dharma Lineage
[...]

菩提達磨 Bodhidharma, Putidamo (Bodaidaruma ?-532/5)
大祖慧可 Dazu Huike (Taiso Eka 487-593)
鑑智僧璨 Jianzhi Sengcan (Kanchi Sōsan ?-606)
大毉道信 Dayi Daoxin (Daii Dōshin 580-651)
大滿弘忍 Daman Hongren (Daiman Kōnin 601-674)
大鑑慧能 Dajian Huineng (Daikan Enō 638-713)
南嶽懷讓 Nanyue Huairang (Nangaku Ejō 677-744)
馬祖道一 Mazu Daoyi (Baso Dōitsu 709-788)
百丈懷海 Baizhang Huaihai (Hyakujō Ekai 750-814)
黃蘗希運 Huangbo Xiyun (Ōbaku Kiun ?-850)
臨濟義玄 Linji Yixuan (Rinzai Gigen ?-866)
興化存獎 Xinghua Cunjiang (Kōke Zonshō 830-888)
南院慧顒 Nanyuan Huiyong (Nan'in Egyō ?-952)
風穴延沼 Fengxue Yanzhao (Fuketsu Enshō 896-973)
首山省念 Shoushan Shengnian (Shuzan Shōnen 926-993)
汾陽善昭 Fenyang Shanzhao (Fun'yo Zenshō 947-1024)
石霜/慈明楚圓 Shishuang/Ciming Chuyuan (Sekisō/Jimei Soen 986-1039)
楊岐方會 Yangqi Fanghui (Yōgi Hōe 992-1049)
白雲守端 Baiyun Shouduan (Hakuun Shutan 1025-1072)
五祖法演 Wuzu Fayan (Goso Hōen 1024-1104)
圜悟克勤 Yuanwu Keqin (Engo Kokugon 1063-1135)
虎丘紹隆 Huqiu Shaolong (Kukyū Jōryū 1077-1136)
應庵曇華 Yingan Tanhua (Ōan Donge 1103-1163)
密庵咸傑 Mian Xianjie (Mittan Kanketsu 1118-1186)
破庵祖先 Poan Zuxian (Hoan Sosen 1136–1211)
無準師範 Wuzhun Shifan (Bujun Shipan 1177–1249)
頑極行彌 Wanji Singmi (Gankyoku Gyōmi)
一山一寧 Yishan Yining (1247-1317 Issan Ichinei)
雪村友梅 Sesson Yūbai (1290-1347)

Sesson Yūbai
In: Poems of the five mountains : an introduction to the literature of the Zen monasteries
by Marian Ury
Ann Arbor, MI, 1992

Sesson Yūbai (b. 1290; not to be confused with the painter Sesson
Shukei, b. 1504) was a dharma-disciple (that is, religious heir) as
well as secular pupil of Issan Ichinei. What Kokan was to the
tradition of scholarship within gozan bungaku Sesson was to its
poetry. The two men were friends — Sesson called on Kokan
several times during the latter's last illness — but were almost
opposites in temperament and career. In 1306, at an age at which
the handsome Kokan had been employed in chanting mantras at the
court of Ex-Emperor Kameyama, Sesson boarded a merchant ship
for China. There Issan's recommendation secured him a warm
reception and discipleship under Issan's own dharma-brother. As a
precociously gifted young foreigner, Sesson was made much of, and
his well-wishers included the painter Ch'ao Meng-fu. In 1308 there
came to the Chinese throne a new emperor who wished to avenge
the humiliation of his grandfather Khubilai by the Japanese. Among
the measures he took was imprisoning all the Japanese monks in
China. Sesson was suspected of spying and barely escaped
execution; his Chinese master died. Released from his jail in Huchou,
he was exiled north to Ch'ang-an; after three years he was
further exiled to the far west, beyond Han-ku Pass. There he
remained for ten years, immersing himself in the study of the
Confucian classics and the Chuang Tzu, which he had loved since
boyhood. When at length a pardon allowed him back in Ch'ang-an,
he was prevented from returning home to Japan by the Yuan court,
this time through the bestowal of honors: he was given the abbacy of
a temple and the title of Meditation Master (Ch'an-shih, Zenji).
Sesson returned to Japan in 1329. He had lived in China for so long
and from such an early age that he had become as much Chinese
as Japanese.

Sesson's later career in Japan is typical of that of many eminent
clerics of his time, periods of seclusion and semiretirement
alternating with abbacies assumed reluctantly at imperial order. His
bearing was severe; it was said that he had never once been seen to
smile. On the twenty-sixth of the eleventh month of 1246 he suffered
a stroke while performing memorial services for one of Issan's
attendants and could no longer move his right arm. On the second
day of the twelfth month he attempted to write his deathbed poem
using his left arm but was unable to make the brush strokes; in a fit
of temper he threw the brush over the screen. But it is recorded that
he died peacefully.

Sesson's poems convey something of his forthright character.
While the other gozan poets preferred to write lü-shih (“regulated
verse”), a strict form that prescribes parallelism in ways that can be
both constricting and supportive, Sesson excelled at the freer kushih
(“ancient verse”).

Chance Verses

I, monk, am exiled west of Han-ku Pass,
Yellow hide, starved belly, bones jut out like crags —
In season I'll sit to banquet amid dark rocks and boulders:
I lack only the Preacher of Emptiness to make my friend.
. . . . .
I, monk, am exiled west of Han-ku Pass,
A single wisteria branch my companion.
South Mountain's green joins Mount Sung with Mount Hua:
This one ascent cheers a whole life's sufferings.

While traveling westward into exile Sesson composed ten verses each with the
same opening line. The Preacher of Emptiness was Subhūti, the one among the
Buddha's disciples who best understood this metaphysical principle that is the
foundation of Zen teaching. Both South Mountain (Nan-shan) and Hua-shan are in
Shensi; Nan-shan is a spur of the K'un-lun Mountains, extending to Sung-shan in
Honan.

Composed on the First Day of the
Seventh Month, the Beginning of Autumn

Heaven and earth so slight: I too, a transient guest
Through the scurrying months and years, endure alarms.
Leaves under wu-fung trees bring news of autumn;
Wind over water-weed bids farewell to warmth.
On Min-shan's peaks I see only the color of cold snow;
Not yet on the river has the waves' sound grown calm.
Where shall I moor my boat? Crickets shrilly cry.
At dusk blue mountain pavilions press against the clearing sky.

This poem was written while Sesson was traveling up the Min River from Ch'engtu,
his place of exile.

Yearning for My Friend on an Autumn Night

I'm by origin a man of the southeast,
And I constantly long for a guest from the southeast;
How will this splendid evening be endured?
Deserted, the rural walks by the city wall.
Dew lies on the chrysanthemums, permeates the garden;
Wind rustles the branches, flutters the drifting leaves.
I hum to myself, but you, dear friend, do not come,
And the bright moon shines in vain in an empty sky.

This poem was composed when the poet was living in a monastery outside the
walls of Ch'ang-an; the ‘southeast’ is Japan.

Irregular Verse

I take no joy in other people's praise,
Other people's slander doesn't scare me,
Just because my ties with the world are sparse
The heart in my bosom is unconstrained as water.
Bound in prison fetters, I survived,
And stayed on in Ch'ang-an three years —
When sometimes it suits my mood to sing
I speak out straight: why bother with fancy words?

Irregular Verse

I'm not T'ao Ch'ien:
It's the northern window I love to look from —
It's not because it was Fu Hsi's custom
That on impulse I take up new verses.
There are brushes eternally ready to copy for hire,
In antiquity withered, today half-consumed by worms.
If you yourself have talent that can stand on its own
It's no use being earnest about petty things.

Line 2 has ‘northern window’ to contrast with the eastern window of one of the
most famous poems of the beloved Six Dynasties poet-recluse T'ao Ch'ien. Fu Hsi
was the first of the legendary Five Emperors who taught mankind the arts of
civilization.

There Is No Resting

Who travels the Way heeds the Heart's and the Way's beginnings,
But the Way's everywhere, without boundaries —
I'll go till the rivers run dry, exhaust the peaks:
In the calm of the clouds I'll sit, and watch the moon light up the heavens.

Like many of the other Zen literati, Sesson was learned in the literature of
philosophical Taoism. Way, tao, is a Buddhist as well as Taoist term, and he ‘who
travels the Way’ (literally, man of the Way) can be either a Taoist adept or a
Buddhist monk. Tao is used as a synonym for bodhi, enlightenment, and line 2 can
be read as a description of the freedom of the mind that has realized its true state.
The third line might be paraphrased ‘I'll go to the ends of the earth’ — but,
additionally, it may allude to the association of mountain peaks with the cult of
immortality in Taoism. The moon is a Buddhist metaphor for enlightenment.

Autumn's Whiteness

Autumn gales drive the shimmering silver saucer of the moon;
Its reflection falls on the clear river, cold as a great length of glossy silk.
Even if red flowers of waterwort were added to these banks
For the man of the Way there is only perception of the one-color realm.

In Zen teaching ‘one-color realm’ denotes a state of awareness, gained in
meditation, in which the notion of the distinctness of phenomena from phenomena
and from the noumenon is destroyed. According to Chinese cosmology, there are
correspondences between seasons of the year, colors, directions, etc.; the color
corresponding to autumn is white.

Thinking of the Old Man of Precious Cloud

On rain-rinsed mountains the colors of autumn linger;
Soon pines turn aged under snow: shapes of the year’s chill.
May my noble master be safe beyond the wide ocean —
Where he grasped the broom to preach my mind sees an empty hall.

Old Man of Precious Cloud was a sobriquet of Issan, who died while Sesson was
in China. The broom is the scepter of authority held by the preacher in Zen
monasteries.